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Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

Will the Search function be permanently disabled or do you plan on restoring it after some major update? Because stalking fellow TW players was my main way of finding new interesting games. As was searching for a specific type of game recruitment (like Lords of Creation for instance) ordered by topic creation date (not possible with google search).

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

As a new poster, this lack of being able to find posts from users... including myself is quite painful.

It's definitely making it harder for me to see if something's been posted a dozen times before.

If you cannot find a thread on something after a couple searches using an outside search engine and checking the threads viewable on the default settings, then the thread you want to create probably doesn't exist*. As such, posting a new thread is the proper way to start a discussion on your topic of choice. Just be sure to put a bit of thought into new threads. I have found that even the most interesting topic produces poor results if it is presented in a haphazard manner.

If you are trying to decide if something has already been mentioned in a thread, reading the thread in its entirety is probably the best way to find if something has been mentioned.

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

After eight days, this question has not been answered, so I'll try again. Will the Search function be permanently disabled or do you plan on restoring it after some major update?

From the very first post:

Originally Posted by Rawhide

In order to improve the stability of the current forums, as well as to prepare for an upgrade in the future, I switched the forums off to perform some maintenance tasks.

...

If stability and speed is greatly improved, I may start the process of reindexing the forums, in order to reenable search. This will take several days and have the effect of slowing the server right back down during this time.

This seems to imply (at least to me) that it's temporary, but possibly long-term. In addition, every time it's been switched off in the past, it has been brought back eventually.

John LingFrog God Games Lead Pathfinder Developer

Note: unless explicitly stated otherwise, opinions in my posts are my own and not those of Frog God Games.

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

Yeah, thanks for the hard work and all, but what are we supposed to do if we need to, y'know, actually search for something? What if we need to find that one specific piece of homebrew for our DM, or what if we want to find a specific type of game? What if we want to find any piece of content relating to phoenixes?

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

This is why disabling the search feature is the absolute last thing I want/wanted to do. For now, please use DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, Yahoo, or your search engine of choice.

*Directs you to this*

Originally Posted by Voltaire, Goodnight Demonslayer

I won't tell you there's nothing 'neath your bed,
I won't tell you that it's all in your head,
This world of ours is not as it seems;
The monsters are real, but they're not in your dreams -
Learn what you can from the beasts you defeat,
You'll need it for some of the people you'll meet!

Originally Posted by Arachne

arachne now imagines Shepherd Book's hair fluttering around like a white butterfly

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

Originally Posted by Hawkflight

Yeah, thanks for the hard work and all, but what are we supposed to do if we need to, y'know, actually search for something? What if we need to find that one specific piece of homebrew for our DM, or what if we want to find a specific type of game? What if we want to find any piece of content relating to phoenixes?

It's not perfect, but appending "site:giantitp.com" to search strings in your engine of choice is generally a fairly effective stop-gap. Judicious use of "intitle:" or similar, or phrase-quotes to indicate forum name, may also be helpful.

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

Originally Posted by tuggyne

It's not perfect, but appending "site:giantitp.com" to search strings in your engine of choice is generally a fairly effective stop-gap. Judicious use of "intitle:" or similar, or phrase-quotes to indicate forum name, may also be helpful.

I didn't know about the "intitle:" command-line for searches. That'll be useful, so thanks.
Any other useful things like this?

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

Originally Posted by Hawkflight

Yeah, thanks for the hard work and all, but what are we supposed to do if we need to, y'know, actually search for something? What if we need to find that one specific piece of homebrew for our DM, or what if we want to find a specific type of game? What if we want to find any piece of content relating to phoenixes?

YES. Yes we do.

Postscript: Sorry if this has been asked before. There was no search function available for me to use to find out.

The in-built search was rubbish anyway, when it was active there were endless threads about it not working and people always suggested site:giantitp.com on Google even then because it was usually more accurate and definitely more flexible when searching keywords.

If you know a piece of homebrew well enough that you want to use it, then you will be able to successfully Google up the title/keywords from it. You're just whining about nothing.

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

Not about nothing. There are things the search function could do that a Google search can't - like finding every mention of a word in a post in order of most recent, for example. As such I really look forward to having it back again.
But yeah, abusing the mods about it is hardly going to get it fixed any faster.

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

Originally Posted by tuggyne

It's not perfect, but appending "site:giantitp.com" to search strings in your engine of choice is generally a fairly effective stop-gap. Judicious use of "intitle:" or similar, or phrase-quotes to indicate forum name, may also be helpful.

Well then ... why not just put a Google search par right in the site itself? I've seen it don before.

Originally Posted by Serpentine

Not about nothing. There are things the search function could do that a Google search can't - like finding every mention of a word in a post in order of most recent, for example. As such I really look forward to having it back again.
But yeah, abusing the mods about it is hardly going to get it fixed any faster.

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

This is true. However, it is noticeably easier to do one thing, than to do another thing. If both achieve the same results, then the first thing is more reasonable.

If you spend five minutes looking for a remote instead of ten seconds hitting a button, for that five minutes you're a sucker. I also find it funny how people always open threads about the search function with "I looked and couldn't find anything on the topic", which means they didnt bother scrolling down the very page they had to go to to start the thread. It's an automated response, almost, not one with critical thinking applied.

Not you, specifically. But a thread about the search function pops up roughly every week. It's continuous, and some of the people don't have any reason to have done so, having the opportunity for reading the prior incarnations fo the Search Disabled threads. I actually applaud you, for coming into ane xisting thread on the topic and making your case.

Originally Posted by Anarion

No, we're not debating the meaning of life here. You shouldn't ask the question nor seek the answer from us. Go build it by doing things. Gather evidence.

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

Hi,
I don't post that often and I am preparing to post something to the Monster in the Darkness thread. Before I do so, I wanted to properly prepare by searching the thread and it's 5 predecessors to see if it's been previously discussed. There's no point posting a "new" idea I've had if it's already been discussed to death.

I know there is the first post on that thread, maintained by Grey Wolf, but I just wanted to be thorough. I was really surprised to find I can't search any more... so eventually I found this thread.

So this post isn't a "please can we have the search back" request. I've read the relevant posts here and I understand the situation.

However I would like to suggest that perhaps the F.A.Q should be changed, if the absence of the search function is going to persist long term.

Re: Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

that does work, to an extent. one feature google really can't provide, that the orignal search function could, was listing items found through search in order of... "freshness"

After you run your search, go to the link for "advanced search" at the bottom of the page. It will allow you to limit your search to certain time spans like last week, last month, etc. It's not precisely in order of recency, but it helps narrow things down.